A "Brand" can be defined at three different levels - each level satisfies a category of brands.
Level-1: Brand is a logo or trade mark and associated visual elements.This definition holds good from a legal point of view. The logo design, logotype, and other visual elements can be registered and are associated with the product. Eg: Intel Logo, Golden Arches of McDonald’s.
Level-2: Brand is a bundle of a logo, associated audio/visual elements, registered trademarks, and other intellectual property rights.
This is a wider view of a brand. Often a branded product includes several intangibles such as patents, business process knowledge, market knowledge etc. Intangible such as business knowledge, market knowledge, customer relationships adds a value to the product. For example Pentium-4 processor would not be successful without the intangible asset which was used to design & build it.
Level-3: Brand represents the company or the entire organization- The Holistic view of brand.
It includes the logo, audio/visual elements, patents, trademarks, intellectual properties, intangible knowledge and the organization: its people, culture and management. All this has to be put together to create a brand. From the Holistic point of view the brand represents a specific value proposition and create strong customer relationships. This view of a brand ties up the company, its reputation and its brands. This is correct, because if there is damage to a brand - it will affect the company reputation also. For example, Ford Explorer fiasco affected Ford Motor Company too or the issues of battery blasts have impacted the image of Nokia.
For consumer brand is a set of expectations and a promise that those expectations will be met, defining a brand takes a careful mix of skills. Due to intangible nature of services the impact of brand is still heightened, as the Brand is only source of trust and faith for the customer. Nothing tangible is provided to customer.
The importance of Brands can be easily understood from the very fact that in the competitive environment it will be important to own a brand rather owning a factory. Visualizing the worth of Brand each and every organization wishes and put lots of efforts in the development of strong brands. These brand building activities are not cent percent successful in-spite of thoughtful expenditure and Commitment from the Top management.
Products and Brand failures occur on ongoing basis to varying degrees within most product- based organization and same is applicable for the services too. This is the negative aspect of the development and marketing process.
The organization is likely to fail, or at least experience financial difficulties that prohibit it from meeting profitability objectives. The primary goal is to learn from product and brand failures so that future product development, design, strategy and implementation will be more successful.
Studying these Brand and Product failures allows those in the planning and implementation process to learn from the mistakes of other product and brand failures. Each product failure can be investigated from the perspective of what, if anything might have been done differently to produce and market a successful product rather than one that failed. The ability to identify key signs in the product development process can be critical. If the product/brand should make it this far, assessing risk before the product is marketed can save an organization budget, and avoid the intangible costs of exposing their failure to the market.